Uncanny X-Force

In today’s episode I finally open one of my all-time favorite modern X-Men runs – but, first, I talk about my intended musical experiment on my own offspring and how it was derailed by our mutual love of Michael Jackson.

News of Marvel’s post-Avengers vs. X-Men plans has leaked, and it’s everything a fan could hope for – major creator changes, new titles, and an intact sense of Marvel’s over seven decades of superhero continuity!

A sneak peak at the future of Marvel from the pen of Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada.

How are they doing it? With Marvel NOW! – a relaunch of one new title a week for five months – 22 new books to stand along some long-running favorites. The official news breaks later today on EW.com, but it hit the web last night.

Avengers, written twice monthly by Jonathan Hickman

Uncanny Avengers, written by by Rick Remender with art by John Cassady!

X-Men, written by Brian M. Bendis

There are other rumored changeovers not covered by EW – namely, Bendis on Guardians of the Galaxy, Frank Cho on Wolverine, Ed McGuinness on Nova, Matt Fraction on Fantastic Four, plus Uncanny X-Men writer Kieron Gillen talking the helm of Iron Man. Plus, already-announced changes like James Asmus on Gambit, and Kelly Sue DeConnick on Captain Marvel starring Carol Danvers.

That’s just 10 of a rumored 22 titles!

What does that mean for readers? Let’s take a look.

Avengers by Jonathan Hickman

Marvel currently runs five Avengers titles separated by blurry lines, and it sounds like some of them will end this fall to make way for this twice-monthly monster.

Hickman is the Marvel architect that reinvented Fantastic Four as a smash hit with a story that spanned 50+ issues and more than quintupled the core cast, but still resolved into several brief, funny arcs. He’s also the author and designer of some mind-bending creator-owned work like Nightly News and Pax Romana.

Now he’s unleashed on one of Marvel’s two big teams, with reportedly 18 characters in a mix of standalone adventures and cosmic smashes. Plus, his one potential weakness – a slowly unfolding meta-story – will be aided by an accelerated ship schedule – already a success on The Amazing Spider-Man.

This is the Avengers everybody wants to be reading after the movie, and it marks an even bigger cast and more prominent role for Hickman, who has yet to misfire. It’s going to be awesome.

Uncanny Avengers by Rick Remender

Remender’s Uncanny X-Force has been a hit since day one, especially because it focuses equally on its cast instead of only featuring Wolverine.

Holy total status quo change, Batman! While The Avengers have had their share of mutant members, Wolverine is the only full-time X-Man to stay with the team for any length.

Now Remender is getting all sorts of X into the Avengers, bringing them X-Men’s traditional adjective along with a team that reportedly boasts Wolverine, fan-favorite Rogue, and First Class star Havok alongside Captain America and Thor.

No one is better for this job than Remender. After bubbling under on a solid run on Punisher he exploded on Uncanny X-Force, a stunningly grim and hilarious take on Wolverine’s secret execution squad. It sent readers into endless fangasms when its first year concluded with the epic Dark Angel Saga. Now Remender in the saddle of what will unarguably be Marvel’s flagship title, with all of the star power of the Marvel Universe at its disposal.

In late-breaking news, art star John Cassaday of Planetary and Astonishing X-Men will be joining Remender, at least for the first arc.

Says Remender: “In 1943, Arnim Zola, who was this bio-fanatic engineer, recorded the Red Skull’s consciousness, and set it to wake up 70 years later. So the Red Skull [in Uncanny] is right out of 1943-44. Prime Nazi scumbag. In his mind, he’s taking that vitriol and hate and Nazi horror and methodology, and pointing it at the mutant species.”

For everyone who argued if the Avengers or the X-Men was Marvel’s Justice League, here’s the answer: it’s both. This is about as huge as a single Marvel comic can be, both in characters and creators.

All New X-Men by Brian Bendis

Fans both love and loathe Avengers impresario Bendis, who has steered the line for nearly a decade. He’s introduced a consistency and gravitas to the once meandering Avengers, bringing them to prominence and expanding a single book to a line of five. He also has steered Marvel’s snappy Ultimate Spider-Man title since day one. But he’s a slow, decompressed storyteller who relies on a lot of talking heads and domestic scenes, and he uproots long-running plot threads for his own plans.

The community buzzed with heartbreaking rumors that he would be wresting control of the entire X-line from beloved authors like Remender, Gillen, and Aaron, but this move is a total left-turn from there! Bendis gets a single X-book, with a time-displaced team of the original five X-Men made popular in every form of media – Cyclops, Iceman, Beast, Angel, and Jean Grey!

This is the best possible weapon for Bendis – fan favorite characters in a new context that’s not a side-universe. It lets him tell stories fans love without the interference they loathe.

Marvel is shaking up its existing architects, with four of them shuffling titles and Rick Remender seemingly replacing Ed Brubaker.

With Avengers vs. X-Men involving the reality-bending Phoenix Force fans have feared the worst for the post-event landscape; fans would riot if Marvel conducted a DC New 52 style full-line reboot. However, if this is the tone the soft relaunch of Marvel will be taking, it looks like readers will have plenty to celebrate.

Marvel’s development over the past few years has been steered by five major authors – Marvel Architects. Brian Michael Bendis on the entire Avengers line; Matt Fraction on Iron Man, Uncanny X-Men, Thor, and The Defenders; Jonathan Hickman’s ground-breaking run on Fantastic Four and cult Secret Warriors; Jason Aaron on Wolverine and his integration into X-Men, and Ed Brubaker on all things Captain America.

It looks like Brubaker is stepping down from his Architecture role, and Remender is stepping up! Meanwhile, a new class of fan favorites like Kieron Gillen, Ed McGuinness, Christoph Gage, and James Asmus has been racking up excellent runs and major sales. If Remender’s move to Uncanny Avengers is any indication it looks like this under-bill of writers is about to step into the spotlight.

Today I bring you a list of the best collections of new X-Men material released in 2011, which collect stories originally published over the last 18 months of comics.

Occasionally I wonder if comic collecting as an adult is merely a shameless attempt at recapturing our youth now that we have the budget to appreciate it properly – especially as I and many other fans (let’s be honest) fetishize premiere format reprints of the comics we coveted as a kids. (Last week’s post covered the best of those from 2011.)

Is there anything to this hobby other than rewarding our inner teenage geeks?

If there’s an answer to be found in X-Men comics, it must be on this list. These are the twelve new X-Men stories that captured my imagination like those old issues I still obsess over, and I categorize “the wonder of feeling like a kid again” separately from “trying to recapture youthful feelings with a dose of well-preserved nostalgia.” Read more…

A team of 90s-popular hyper-killers plus a parody of a 90s hyper-killer sounds very … 90s. Right?

Wrong, when they are in the hands of breakout star writer of 2011, Rick Remender. Wolverine is deadly and deadpan, Psylocke and Archangel are both believably in love and reluctant to pull a trigger, Deadpool is simultaneously hilarious and murderous, and Fantomex is like Robert Downey Jr. playing James Bond playing Deadpool as a Frenchman. This opening arc fires on all cylinders and Jerome Opena’s art is beyond gorgeous. (Read my original review.)

Even more Wolverine? And how did this book get on here when I claim to dislike Jason Aaron?

As it turns out, Aaron is at his best when he’s at his most zany, which is maybe why I don’t enjoy him on straight Wolverine books. With Peter Parker as his narrator, a nonsensical cross-time caper as his backdrop, and the best-ever take on a classic scenery-chewing X-villain from artist Adam Kubert, he finds sure success. This book is madcap, requires little or no prior knowledge, and is repeatedly worthy of an actual LOL.

Early previews of Age of X left fans a little cold – another alternate reality with twisted versions of our heroes? Leave it to Mike Carey, departing this month after a 70+ issue run on X-Men Legacy, to surprise us all by turning in a subtle, slow-burning alternate reality tale. Age of X is a quality mystery story that gets deep into the psychology of all of our favorite X-Men, plus features delectable art from rising star Clay Mann.

To fully appreciate the deft, self-contained world of Age of X, you also need the strong Aftermath, which bookends Age of X with a pair of significant stories that both benefit from and add depth to to the mysteriously twisted alternative world. Throughout, Rogue (and, to a lesser extent, Magneto) is star of the show. (Read my original AOX and Aftermath reviews.)

Both Age of X and Aftermath are available for pre-order in paperback. If you like the actual-reality of Aftermath, try X-Men Legacy: Emplate (HC or TPB). If you like the alternate-reality of Age of X, pre-order the massive forthcoming Age of Apocalypse Omnibus.

Since it’s 2009 debut New Mutants has been a fun read, but its first year of issues read like an overflow pan for plots too periphery for Uncanny X-Men to deal with. Here the book not only gets its own unique story, but it is a gripping, daunting action-adventure with high stakes that stretch all the way back the Inferno saga of the 1980s!

Spider-Man writer Zeb Wells nails the characterization of the entire team (even oft-ignored Karma!) and Leonard Kirk draws engaging comic art without the fussy overly-detailed photo-reference of his peers. Together, they plunge the team into one of their most desperate positions (and that is saying a lot for this group of characters!), which makes the shocking resolution even more satisfying! (Read my original review.)

This directly precedes Age of X (above), and should absolutely be read beforehand if you plan to pick up both. Also available in paperback. If you like this, try X-Infernus (HC or TPB) or New Mutants: The Return of Legion (HC or TPB) – both of which are key setup for this arc.

Do not be surprised when every year-end X-Men list names this as the storyline of the year. Or decade. Or “ever, since Dark Phoenix.” Writer Rick Remender finds layers in his kill-squad of Deadpool, Psylocke, and Fantomex that never existed before and somehow finds a way to make Wolverine not the main character, all while crafting Angel into the best villain the X-Men have faced in years (decades?) (since Dark Phoenix?).

Yet, this Saga isn’t all endless piles of over-dramatic continuity porn – it starts off with two killer one-shot issues before beginning its sickening ascent up a rollercoaster of plot that pays off with insane loop-to-loops in the forthcoming Book 2. Together they form the story named by a vast majority of X-Men fans – including your author – as the best of 2011.

Plus: the original Dark X-Man, Jean Grey … but not how you might have expected.

X-Force, Uncanny X-Force, and X-Statix comic books in a definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and trade reading order for omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated December 2017 with titles scheduled for release through August 2018.

X-Force was born in an act of pure marketing: artist Rob Liefeld was ultra hot on Marvel’s New Mutants at the early height of the speculator craze, and he wanted to take the team in a new, more XTREME direction. Thus, X-Force was born – a team of proactively violent mutants lead by Cable for whom the ends always justified the means.

Liefeld didn’t last all that long on the title before defecting to Image, but X-Force has been a part of the X-Men brand ever since. After a detour as the reality TV-inspired X-Statix and brief retread by Liefeld in 2004, it was brought back to major popularity and acclaim in 2008 as Wolverine’s covert team of killers as authorized by Cyclops.

When that series wound down, X-Force returned under the coveted “Uncanny” adjective, and there may have never been a series more deserving – Rick Remender penned a fierce all-time classic that began as a hunt for Apocalypse but turned into much more. In addition to writing the best Archangel story of all time, Remender brought Psylocke to the X-Force brand and turned her into its marquee star, along with Grant Morrison creation Fantomex.

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